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Limitless Summoner: Rise of the Soul God-Chapter 142 : I reject it
The moment Ethan, Lia, and Luna stepped through the portal, they were greeted by a wave of dry, scorching heat. The sudden shift from the damp swamp to an arid desert left them momentarily disoriented.
Luna coughed, waving a hand in front of her face as the hot wind carried fine grains of sand around them. "Ugh! Big brother, it's in my mouth!"
Ethan squinted against the sunlight and took in their surroundings. The landscape stretched endlessly in every direction, filled with golden dunes and jagged sandstone cliffs. The sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue, the heat shimmering over the sand like a mirage.
He immediately noticed the difference in atmosphere compared to the previous dungeons. The swamp had been thick with mist and predators lurking in the shadows. Here, it was open—yet strangely quiet.
Too quiet.
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Lia shaded her eyes with her hand, scanning the horizon. "Master… I don't see any monsters."
Ethan frowned. That was odd. Usually, the dungeon's ecosystem would throw a few immediate threats at newcomers. "Stay alert," he warned. "Just because we can't see them, doesn't mean they aren't watching."
And then—just as he said that—the ground shifted beneath them. A ripple ran across the sand, like something moving below.
BOOM!
The sand exploded upward as dozens of scaled beasts erupted from below, desert scorpions, each the size of a cat. Its crimson carapace gleamed under the sun, its deadly pincers snapping open with a loud clack, and its long, segmented tail arched high above, dripping with thick, black venom.
Luna yelped, grabbing Ethan's sleeve. "B-Big brother—!"
Ethan had already started summoning his minions. At his command, his horde surged forward. The insectoids leaped onto the scorpions, their mandibles clicking as they tried to pierce their tough exoskeletons. Though it took a couple of tries, they eventually managed to break in.
The lesser demons had all reached level 10 already, but a few of them succumbed to the venom attacks. Lia managed to step in at the nick of time and healed them before they could deal lasting damage.
Otherwise, the fight was mostly uneventful. Lia was the only one struggling a bit because of the atmosphere. Ethan's high stats made him immune to the climate, and Luna did not seem bothered by the sand anymore.
"I told them not to annoy me, and they stopped it!" She answered with a smile when asked.
Ethan raised an eyebrow at Luna's words. She told the sand not to bother her? He gave up on trying to understand the way her magic worked. He sidelined a scorpion for Luna to attack, and a ball of angry flames did the creature in.
"Yay! I got it! I got my level!" Luna immediately clapped in delight.
Ethan let out a relieved breath, ruffling Luna's hair. "Good job. But don't celebrate too much, there is still a long way to go."
Luna puffed out her cheeks but nodded enthusiastically. "Okay, okay! But I really did it! I got stronger!"
Ethan smirked. "Yeah, and we'll make sure you keep getting stronger. By the way, how many stats did you get from the level up?"
"What are stats, big brother?"
"Luna, open your system status and take a look at everything properly. Ummm… Your name and other details."
A few seconds later, she mumbled in confusion, "Xerthamia Thalia? Who the hell is that?"
"Ugh. That's your name. Remember? You forgot many things. This is your original name."
Ethan stared at her, wondering if this would trigger any memories, but the next moment, the girl simply scoffed and crossed her arms in front of her, puffing out her chest. "I reject it. I am Luna."
Ethan blinked, then let out a short laugh. "You reject it?"
Luna nodded firmly, crossing her arms. "Yes! Luna is my name. That other one sounds weird and stuffy. I don't like it."
Lia, who had been listening quietly, pressed her lips together. "But Luna… that is your true name. Your identity."
Luna puffed her cheeks in defiance. "Nope! Big brother calls me Luna, and I like Luna better! So I'm Luna!"
Ethan snorted, shaking his head. "Alright, alright. If you want to be Luna, you're Luna."
Honestly, after everything that had happened, he wasn't going to force a name on her. But wait…
He glanced at Luna again, considering the implications. If she rejected her name, did that mean she was rejecting something deeper—her past? Her existence as Xerthamia Thalia? Or was it just a stubborn child's whim?
Argh. He felt his mind spinning with theories. How could he possibly understand a situation like this? Who knew what a primordial neonate was capable of? He decided to let it be and go along with the flow.
"Luna, did anything else show up when you tried to look at your system?" he asked. "Or did you remember something else? Maybe where you are from?"
Luna scrunched her nose, thinking hard. "Ummm… it was mostly empty? Just my name—and I changed it to Luna!—and something about being a 'Primordial Neonate' or whatever that means. It's too boring, big brother. I don't want to read these things. I want to kill more things!"
She looked at him, stars twinkling in her eyes, and Ethan felt a chill run down his spine. "Okay. You can kill whatever you want. Here, some more monsters are coming out from that hole."
He watched her run and wreak havoc on the sand beetles that seemed to keep crawling out of the ground. Already, his minions were fighting with each other and clearing out the dungeon at an insane speed.
With Luna on the side, the whole dungeon looked emptier by the second, except for the mountain of corpses that were beginning to pile up. "I need to buy another storage pouch or maybe more."
Ethan then remembered he did not get an actual answer from Luna. "How many stats did you get?"
"20, big brother!" Came the immediate response, and his jaw dropped on the ground. This little girl was a monster!